Toward a theory of schizophrenia
17 Jan 2007-Systems Research and Behavioral Science (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)-Vol. 1, Iss: 4, pp 251-264
TL;DR: The theory of schizophrenia is based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types as discussed by the authors, and from observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the necessary conditions for, a situation called the double bind, where no matter what a person does, he "can't win".
Abstract: Schizophrenia—its nature, etiology, and the kind of therapy to use for it—remains one of the most puzzling of the mental illnesses. The theory of schizophrenia presented here is based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. From this theory and from observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the necessary conditions for, a situation called the “double bind”—a situation in which no matter what a person does, he “can't win.” It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms. How and why the double bind may arise in a family situation is discussed, together with illustrations from clinical and experimental data.
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TL;DR: The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
Abstract: The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
22,421 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1972
TL;DR: Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead as discussed by the authors, and his major work will continue to delight and inform generations of readers.
Abstract: Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. With a new foreword by his daughter Mary Katherine Bateson, this classic anthology of his major work will continue to delight and inform generations of readers. "This collection amounts to a retrospective exhibition of a working life...Bateson has come to this position during a career that carried him not only into anthropology, for which he was first trained, but into psychiatry, genetics, and communication theory...He ...examines the nature of the mind, seeing it not as a nebulous something, somehow lodged somewhere in the body of each man, but as a network of interactions relating the individual with his society and his species and with the universe at large."--D. W. Harding, New York Review of Books "[Bateson's] view of the world, of science, of culture, and of man is vast and challenging. His efforts at synthesis are tantalizingly and cryptically suggestive...This is a book we should all read and ponder."--Roger Keesing, American Anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) was the author of Naven and Mind and Nature.
7,679 citations
TL;DR: The tragedy of the commons as a food basket is averted by private property, or something formally like it as mentioned in this paper, which is why the commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable only under conditions of low-population density.
Abstract: The tragedy of the commons as a food basket is averted by private property, or something formally like it. The pollution problem is a consequence of population. Analysis of the pollution problem as a function of population density uncovers a not generally recognized principle of morality, namely: the morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed. Those who have more children will produce a larger fraction of the next generation than those with more susceptible consciences. Perhaps the simplest summary of the analysis of man’s population problems is this: the commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable only under conditions of low-population density. As the human population has increased, the commons has had to be abandoned in one aspect after another. The man who takes money from a bank acts as if the bank were a commons.
7,119 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1973
TL;DR: In this paper, the place of separation and loss in psychopathology is defined as the place where separation and separation in Psychopathology, and a place where people are at risk of separation from their families.
Abstract: Security, Anxiety, And Distress * Prototypes of Human Sorrow * The Place of Separation and Loss in Psychopathology * Behavior with and without Mother: Humans * Behaviors with and Without Mother: Non-Human Primates An Ethological Approach To Human Fear * Basic Postulates in Theories of Anxiety and Fear * Forms of Behavior Indicative of Fear * Situations that Arouse Fear in Humans * Situations That Arouse Fear in Animals * Natural Clues to Danger and Safety * Natural Clues, Cultural Clues, and the Assessment of Danger * Rationalization, Misattribution, and Projection * Fear of Separation Individual Differences In Susceptibility To Fear: Anxious Attachment * Some Variables Responsible for Individual Differences * Susceptibility to Fear and the Availability of Attachment Figures * Anxious Attachment and Some Conditions That Promote It * Overdependency and the Theory of Spoiling * Anger, Anxiety, and Attachment * Anxious Attachment and the Phobias of Childhood * Anxious Attachment and Agoraphobia * Omission, Suppression, and Falsification of Family Context * Secure Attachment and the Growth of Self-Reliance * Pathways for the Growth of Personality
2,837 citations
01 Jan 1999
TL;DR: For instance, this article pointed out that intoxication and conversion were common responses even to these abstract and difficult pieces, in which a fraction of the argument was carried on a tide of intuitive affirmation.
Abstract: arguments, that Gregory and others labored to “unpack” over the intervening years; and still there are surprises hidden within them that become visible as the reader comes to move freely in the text. Frequently , during his career, as his Introduction indicates, Gregory felt as if he were speaking and writing in a foreign language. People did not simply agree or disagree with him; they were bewildered or intoxicated. Mark Engels, in his 1971 Preface, recognized the analogy between the “mind expanding” experiences of drugs and religious conversion and the kinds of intellectual change that could be achieved by a pervasive reshaping of patterns of thought. In retrospect it strikes me that intoxication and conversion were common responses even to these abstract and difficult pieces—responses in which a fraction of the argument was carried on a tide of intuitive affirmation. Today, however, it is becoming increasingly possible to come to grips with Gregory’s thinking, to select, affirm, contest, question. Throughout his life, he treasured the relationships in which he found opportunities for intellectual grappling that went beyond admiration adulation; critical reading is essential. This new edition, then, invites readers into an encounter with the work of Gregory Bateson that was only available to a few when the collection first appeared. My advice to readers would be to hang on to the challenge as well as the affirmation. We have not as a civilization achieved those epistemological shifts that may some day enable nuclear disarmament, ecological responsibility, and new approaches to both education and healing that will value and enhance the complexity of persons in their familial and social setting. In these and in Gregory’s later books (Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Dutton 1979, and, jointly with me, Angels Fear: Toward an Epistemology of the Sacred, Macmillan, 1987) the intellectual tools are offered. Today they will come more readily to hand, be easier to balance and handle in a disciplined manner than they were in the early 1970s, be more accessible to practice and skill. But still there remains the challenge of using the tools in such a way that they be-come a part of the user. And still the tasks for which these tools have been shaped largely remain to be done, more urgent today than ever. —Mary Catherine Bateson Cambridge, Mass. August 1987
2,682 citations
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01 Jan 1934
261 citations
Journal Article•
246 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the Anniversary Reactions in Parents Precipitated by Children were studied. But they focused on the relationship between parents and children and did not consider the relationship among adults and children.
Abstract: (1953). Anniversary Reactions in Parents Precipitated by Children. Psychiatry: Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 73-80.
51 citations